Rashna Marga
sat down, propping himself up against a small boulder. Walking a few steps
had drained him and he felt a small ball of fear in his stomach. The
others—what of them? Are they all gone? What has happened to them?
He took off his helmet and injected himself with another stimulant to stay
awake.

I am hurt
much more badly that I first thought, he realized, and my condition
has not stabilized.

“Please believe
me when I say I take no pleasure in the loss of your men,” Cruz said.

Rashna Marga
snorted. “I will say the prayers for each of them. And then I will kill
you, Ramon Cruz—and I will take great pleasure in that.”

“If that’s
what you want. But perhaps the geneseed of you and your comrades is too
valuable to leave here in this forest. And in any event, who will tell
your Chapter Master what really happened here? Who really killed your men?”

“You had more
Dark Angels here—as I had suspected. They killed my detachment.” Scowling,
Rashna Marga drew his weapon again.

“There were
no other Dark Angels. If I am right, what killed your men is what brought
us here in the first place.”

Rashna Marga
cocked the bolt pistol. “You are lying. But then, that’s what you bastards
do best, isn’t it?”

But still—something
troubled Rashna Marga. Those screams—they were not just cries of agony.
He had never heard Tigers—or anyone—die like that. Even over the damaged
comlink, those screams had had been full of pain and fear and terror—and
they had been short. Too short. As if something had somehow cut them off.

Rashna Marga
lowered the pistol. “I will let you live a few minutes longer, Cruz. Tell
me about why you Dark Angels are here.”

“First, can
I interest you in a way off this planet?”

Rashna Marga
raised his weapon again. “I said—”

“Senor, there
will be plenty of time later. But if we do not hurry, what killed your
men will find—and kill—us.”

Rashna Marga
said nothing for a moment. Then he put away his pistol. “All right. I’m
listening.”

“Your ship—can
you not reach it?”

“No,” Rashna
Marga replied. “The Garuda is out of reach of my helmet com. And
my emergency beacon was smashed in the fall.”

“How long before
they come searching for you?”

“They will
not. If something has happened to the other Tigers, the Garuda will
return to Veda.”

“Ah,” Cruz
said. “That is unfortunate. But I expected as such. My emergency beacon
is working, I think. I have activated it to recall the ship that brought
us
here. So far, the ship has not responded. Perhaps you can take my beacon
and reconfigure the frequency to the one your ship uses.”

“It is certainly
worth a try.” He knew that the Garuda had attacked the Dark Angel
ship and driven back into the Warp, but there was no sense in telling Cruz
that. Rashna Marga rose—slowly—to his feet. The canyon became dark for
a moment, then his head cleared. He went slowly, arms outstretched to keep
his balance, and sat down with a gasp beside Cruz.

Cruz handed
him a small module. “Here it is. Hurry.”

Evening came
quickly—Khrell rotated on its axis every 17 standard hours. The forest
became more and more dark as the shadows grew. The creature lurched on,
well pleased with itself. It had never killed these striped Marines before
but had found the experience exhilarating. The memories it had absorbed
from them told it that they had fought some Dark Angels earlier, and the
thought that no more were about saddened it. It had been a very long time—almost
10,000 years—since it had killed any Dark Angels.

It had been
a very long time that it had done much of anything, actually. Idly, it
wondered if his old rival, Paddock, was still alive. It had much to repay
Paddock for, starting with the millennia of incarceration within the space
hulk.

But first it
had to get off this planet. Surely these Tigers and Angels had to have
a starship somewhere in orbit—or perhaps even here on the surface?

It trudged
on, searching. Sometime later—how long, it did not know—its communications
scanner detected a scrambled signal. It stopped and summoned its energies
to access the frequency and decipher the code.

“Garuda, this
is Rashna Marga,” a voice said, “Our mission has failed but a prisoner
has been taken. I am injured and require immediate assistance and evacuation.
Transmitting our coordinates to you now.”

Wonderful,
it thought to itself. How wonderful. Its internal thought engines
triangulated the source of the transmissions and cross referenced them
with all the geography that it had learned in the months since the crash
had freed it. Not far.

The ancient
horror started moving again, a growing anticipation filling it. In a few
minutes it began to sense the psyches of the two surviving Loyalists—soon
it would be within teleport range of them. And then, the ship would arrive—and
it would kill those Marines too. And then—

If it still
had a face, it would have smiled. And then, it thought to itself,
then
a whole universe awaits. I will integrate my systems into the ship’s and
I will go anywhere. I will truly be free again. And there is so much to
catch up on. But first—

It started
to hurry, its metal-shod strides quickening, its ancient pistons churning.

“If your ship
does not reach us in time,” said Cruz, “will your Chapter investigate what
happened here?”

Rashna Marga
smiled grimly. “My Chapter is busy elsewhere.”

“Ah, the war
on Auros IX. I have read the reports.”

Rashna Marga’s
eyes narrowed. “How did you know about that?”

“The mobilization
of an entire Chapter is a hard thing to hide, even in space,” Cruz replied.
“We Dark Angels take pride in learning secrets. And we always keep tabs
on our foes.”

Cruz noticed
that he could no longer feel his legs. Maybe that’s a good thing, he
thought. At least the pain is gone. He looked down and noticed that
his good arm was trembling. He felt curiously detached. Nothing seemed
to matter anymore. Not his dead comrades, not the mission, not the idea
that he was slowly dying at the bottom of a stony gorge somewhere very
far away from Neuvo Esperanza.

“Do you know
why I’m here and not on Auros IX with the others?” the Tiger said.

“Of course
I do. You’re Rashna Marga, the Tiger who stumbled across a clue about an
old enemy of ours. You’re the one we abducted and mind-siphoned. And that
was wrong.”

Cruz extended
his one good hand. “I am a member of a select group of Dark Angels. We
found out that you had been aboard that space hulk and had seen something
there that might lead us to a Chaos Sorcerer named Zechariah. So we abducted
you and interrogated you and then mindwiped you so you would not remember.
And I am sorry.”

Rashna Marga
looked at Cruz’s gauntleted hand like it was some sort of loathsome alien
insect. “Were you there? Did you do these things to me?”

“No. I was
not.”

“Then your
words mean nothing, Dark Angel. And even if you were there, your words
would still mean nothing.”

Cruz lowered
his arm. “If you want revenge, you already have it. You’ve killed my men
and you’ve killed me, too. There’s nothing more you can take from me. But
you’re dying too, I think. Your days of hunting Dark Angels are over. So
if you cannot have more vengeance, and if you will not take my apology,
what more can you have for yourself? When will you be satisfied?”

They said nothing
for a while.

“This Sorcerer—Zechariah—tell
me more about him.”

“An enemy from
the earliest days of the Dark Angels. We had pursued him for centuries.
There was a rumor that another Chaos Sorcerer had defeated him in a duel
and marooned him aboard a space hulk. The same space hulk that you and
your Tigers blundered across three years ago. The insignia you found suggested
it.”

“And using
what you took from me, you determined the space hulk’s course. Followed
it here.”

“As did you,”
Cruz said. “But we were after Zechariah.”

“Why? Why was
he so important? Why hunt him for so far, for so long?”

Cruz could
feel his chest tighten. He felt cold. How much longer do I have? Does
it matter anymore? “You tell me, Tiger. Why hunt an enemy so far, for
so long?”

From the darkness
of the river, something exploded beneath the surface. A huge spray of water
drenched them. And Cruz knew he had mere moments to live.

Wings glowing
red, then white from the heat of re-entry, the Garuda re-entered
the atmosphere of Khrell. The air was clear and the winds docile; beneath
his orange and black helmet, pilot Raaman Dursha smiled. They were making
excellent time. Indeed, they would be early.

Zechariah the
Damned, Sorcerer, whispered a brief prayer of thanks to the powers of Chaos
as the teleportation spell materialized it at the bottom of the river,
displacing thousands of gallons of water with its sudden arrival. Any other
Sorcerer, even one bearing Terminator armor, would have been swept away
by the rushing current. But Zechariah was not like any other Sorcerer.
It was something much greater than that. Its armored bulk held it in place,
immovable, until it decided to raise its titanium foot and take a step.
And then another.

On shore, Rashna
Marga injected himself with the last of his stimulants and spared a glance
at Cruz. His head lay against the cold, wet stone and he was shuddering
uncontrollably. Not from fear, he knew. Yama beckons to him, he
thought. He had seen other men die this way. Many other men.

The surface
erupted again and the ancient gray bulk of the Dreadnought appeared. Dozens
of red lights—its eyes—fluttered madly across its faceplate like horrid,
glowing moths. Its left arm ended in a taloned claw that clenched and unclenched
spasmodically. Its right arm ended in the corroded barrels of two autocannons,
weapons older than the ancient Fighting Tigers Chapter itself.

The thing tittered,
a ridiculously obscene sound for something so monstrous. “Hello, kittycat,”
it said, well-pleased with its cleverness.

If I had
a medal for each time one of you Traitorous filth made jokes like that,
Rashna Marga thought, and fired his bolt pistol at Zechariah’s faceplate,
where the red eyes buzzed and swarmed. The Tiger nearly fell over from
the recoil of the shot as it ricocheted harmlessly away.

It lumbered
forward. “Step aside, now, kitty. I’ve had enough fun with your kind today.
It’s him I want,” the Sorcerer-Dreadnought said, its voice harsh and grating
with a strange, halting accent. Dimly, Rashna Marga found himself surprised
that it spoke Imperial Gothic.

Rashna Marga
stood his ground and fired again. Again, the shot bounced off. Zechariah
began to giggle. Its heavy, clawed feet pulverized riverstones as it came
closer.

One thousand
one, the Tiger counted to himself. He knew he had perhaps ten more
seconds to live. One thousand two.

Zechariah swatted
Rashna Marga aside with a slap of a cannon barrel. He heard someone screaming
and knew, this time, that it was him. A new pain—huge, and white hot, worse
than any he had ever felt—erupted inside his trunk. He did not feel himself
slam into the rocks nearby.